Little Elephants » Games

Halloween craft ideas

Veronique Christensen — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:54:00 +0000

A quick round-up of spooky-ooky crafts for folks who might be needing a bit of Halloween inspiration!

Crafts

Pumpkin carving party: Nine girls, and nine pumpkins. A perfect combination.
Paper bag pumpkin: Simple paper craft for little ones.
Halloween jewels: A happy craft.
A spooky spider: An incredibly easy project with pipe cleaners and pom-poms
Pumpkin patch prints: Finger painting with your knuckles is tons of fun. Really!

Food

Halloween cupcakes: Where Vero proves that it really doesn’t matter if you have no design skilz at all.
Skeleton cupcakes: As found in Family Fun magazine.

Costumes

Bam-Bam costume: An easy costume to whip up for your tough guy.
Flower costume: Vero & Tomas’ first costume collaboration.
Batman: Tor’d put in a special request for this one. I think it came out quite well. It also mixes well with other costumes.
Hermione & a wizard: super simple
Paper dragons: In spite of how sad the kids look in the picture, they were thrilled with this one

Tic-tac-toe

Veronique Christensen — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:22:18 +0000

While visiting family this past week I discovered this wonderful game created by my niece. Naturally, I had to snap a quick shot to share here.

To create your own all you need is a small block of wood (this one is about 3×4 inches), a drill (requiring adult supervision!), and golf tees. If you can’t find colored golf tees, I’m thinking it would be fun to decorate those, too.

What I love about this as a project is you can let your child be as creative as they like with the decorating, and it’s ok to stay with simple & functional. Either way, it’s a fun toy to entertain for years to come.

Can you hear me now?!

Veronique Christensen — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:52:27 +0000

On Sunday afternoon Maggie was at an extended sleep-over, Tor was napping, and Bjørn was B*O*R*E*D, bored.

This mama did what and self-preserving soul would, and hauled out two plastic cups, a skewer, and ten feet of kitchen string. Voila! We have a telephone system.

It killed me how easy this was: I just poked one hole in the bottom of each cup with the skewer, threaded the kitchen string through and knotted it on the inside of the cups. You’ll want to pull (very) taught and have one person listen while the other speaks. I promise you and your kid will be amazed at how incredibly well this works.

Bjørn and I spent a good bit of time telling each other silly secrets that Dad couldn’t hear

What passes for TV in our house

Veronique Christensen — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:30:03 +0000

{Vero sticks with the post a day for November by sharing random photos}

Stick toddler in box — instant family entertainment

{groan … when you stick something up on the internets, it’s forever … folks who get my blog feed will no doubt be laughing at my title’s typo … now corrected}

PVC pipe toys

Veronique Christensen — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 11:57:45 +0000

Last night we had dinner with some dear friends. While the adults chatted, the kids found a box full of PVC pipes and connectors and had a blast playing with them. They literally spent over an hour constructing an elaborate watering system for my friend’s garden. I couldn’t believe what a great game they made of it! Tomas and I got dollar signs in our eyes as we imagined marketing such a toy. We’d have bright primary colors, widgets and whosits, bells and whistles to attach. It was a glorious moment.

This morning I did about five seconds of research and found another dad had the exact same inspiration and acted upon it over a year ago. He created Konstruk Tubes.

I’m not planning on buying the set just now, but I do think that when we have a bit more space I’ll have to bring the kids with me on an outing to the hardware store to get us a bucket-full of pipes and attachments. It’s just too much fun not to. Crazy-cheap, too

Pokemon obsessed

Veronique Christensen — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 20:43:40 +0000

Bjørn has dumped his treasured Tamagotchis in favor of the eminently more exciting Pokemon. He rents all the movies, is a member of the club, visits the sites, spends all his allowance on new cards, and is thrilled to instruct the uninitiated in the glories of all things Pokemon. He’s even recruited his sister into the brotherhood, and they have started making their own cards. First designing them based on "real" characters, and then branching off to create their own.

I’m not sure what I’ll do when he discovers Dungeons and Dragons, or World of Warcraft…

I do know I’ll be learning quite a bit about magical characters

Poolside tents

Veronique Christensen — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 23:05:53 +0000

Second only to table-top tents, we love chair-top tents. Today M&B spent a blessedly good bit of time arranging and negotiating their poolside condo. Each section was its own home with special characters (animals, I think) living in each.

When the olders weren’t re-arranging their new homes, they were testing their newfound swim skills against each other. Race after race; breast-stroke, free-style, back-stroke… they tried it all.

Meanwhile Momma sat in the shade and muttered to herself that she would get well again. Soon.

Brain games

Veronique Christensen — Wed, 16 May 2007 12:01:56 +0000

The olders love puzzles. Any kind of puzzle will get them going for a good half-hour — just enough time for Mom to take care of whatever needs doing around the house without (much) interruption.

One of their favorite games these days is this one called RUSH HOUR by Think Fun. The game comes with a bunch of plastic cars, a "road" and 40 puzzles for the kids to solve, the objective being to get out of a mythical traffic jam. They love it.

Personally, this sort of thing drives me nuts, so I’ve decided that they must have gotten this trait for problem solving their Dad. I’d much rather deal with "real" problems like how to translate grams to cups so my crepe come out right.

Table-top tent

Veronique Christensen — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 19:13:43 +0000

I’ve been under the weather and miserable today — living with a box of tissues by my side, and dreaming of, well, dreaming. Definitely not the stuff that fun kids’ activities are made of.

So I’ll follow Charlene’s cue and post an easy kid distraction for us poor, tired ~~moms~~ parents who just need a break every now and again.

All you need is a super big sheet, a table and a child’s imagination.

Enjoy your five minutes, I know I will.

The quiet game

Veronique Christensen — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:00:21 +0000

After three hours biking through the Baylands, the kids came up with a timely game. Silence: the kid who can keep quiet the longest wins. They are clever, eh? And, having been on foot while they biked the whole time, this Momma certainly needed this game.